When Bill Rigler worked on international development issues as chief of staff at the Rockefeller Foundation, he says he quickly learned that to make progress, you need to look at how the entire system functions, not just one piece of it.

He sees those same lessons playing out in Boulder today.

"I hear a lot from people in the tech sector," he says. "They're trying to grow their businesses, but they can't find office space, their employees can't afford to live here. We're losing middle-income families. If we want to do something about traffic, we need for it to be possible for people to live here."

Rigler, 40, director of university relations at Naropa University, is seeking his first term on Boulder City Council.

The Daily Camera asked each of the 17 candidates running for five open council seats to take a reporter on a short tour of Boulder that highlights their personal and policy relationship to the community they seek to serve.

Bill Rigler starts at the Mount Sanitas trailhead and heads briskly up the steep, rocky staircase.

Professional background: Director of university relations, Naropa University; formerly director of communications for Al Gore's climate change initiative; chief of staff for the Rockefeller Foundation

Meet the candidates

The Daily Camera is profiling each of Boulder's 17 candidates for City Council. The stories will be published each day through Saturday. Read the previous installments at dailycamera.com.

"This is one of my absolute favorite places to come," he says. "It's so close, so accessible. I come here for exercise. I come here for solace. I come here to clear my head."

Rigler supports access to open space for recreation, and he doesn't think that's in conflict with habitat protection. Being on open space helps people appreciate it and want to preserve it.

"The best way to have an aggressive conservation agenda is to let people use the space," he says.

Rigler says he was urged to run by people in the community "who are very concerned with people who want Boulder to return to how it was 30 years ago."

Taking another lesson from international development work, Rigler says people are more motivated by a positive vision of the future than by fear.

"If you want to effect change, show people what success looks like and show them a vision for how you get there," he says.

Rigler wants to focus on jobs, workforce housing and transportation, and he sees all of these issues as interconnected.

'Inconsistent with the values of innovation'

Rigler, a member of the Transportation Advisory Board, voted in favor of the "right-sizing" project on Folsom Street that reduced vehicle lanes to make room for buffers for protected bike lanes. After initially supporting the project, the City Council recently decided to scale it back, returning the most congested portions to four lanes for cars.

Rigler said it's important to make decisions based on data.

On the Transportation Advisory Board, he supported a slower, more cautious approach to the project. But it's ironic that critics of the project who said there wasn't enough data beforehand were successful in removing a section of it with no data to support that decision.

In just eight weeks, bike use increased and speeds were reduced, which improves safety for everyone. Now, the cause of protected bike lanes has been set back indefinitely.

"What was a fairly straightforward proposition to meet the goals of the Transportation Master Plan is now not available," he says. "This was a pilot. It's inconsistent with the values of innovation if we're not willing to innovate on a one-mile stretch of road."

At the same time, Rigler says he will never again support a pilot program that doesn't have clear metrics and measurements and extensive public outreach.

Rigler believes the backlash over Folsom was as much about a sense of the City Council overreaching yet again as it was about sitting in traffic.

Rigler would like the City Council to act more like a board of directors and not use the body to advance "personal agendas."

As examples, he cites a moratorium on projects that would require site or use reviews that was proposed by Councilman Sam Weaver last year on short notice (and then withdrawn), and a head tax proposal long supported by Mayor Matt Appelbaum that picked up momentum amid anti-growth sentiment.

Both proposals caught the business community off guard.

Rigler says there is no excuse for the city's anemic social media presence and difficult-to-navigate website in a town with the technical expertise that Boulder has. The city should have dedicated social media staff and do more to tell its own success stories.

But the City Council also needs to engage differently with its constituents.

"Stop having seven-hour meetings, and get out in the community," he says. "We have to be willing to meet people where they are."

'Best solutions are not your own'

Rigler took up meditation before taking his job at Naropa and would incorporate mindfulness into his leadership on City Council.

"Mindfulness includes the concept that the best ideas and best solutions are not your own," he says. "How do you create an environment where everyone feels listened to and heard and has the opportunity to contribute rather than the typical Type A leadership where you say, 'This is my plan and you go do it'?"

Rigler lives in the Uptown area of north Boulder in "an amazing mixed-use neighborhood" with low and middle-income residents. He believes it's the kind of 15-minute neighborhood the city needs to develop more of and the kind of neighborhood people with families are happy to live in.

He cites the recently approved mixed-use S'PARK project at Boulder Junction as the type of development the city needs more of.

Rigler also wants to see the city do more direct purchase of rental units for middle-income workers and have income guidelines that allow teachers, firefighters, police officers, nonprofit sector workers and people engaged in other public service to live here.

He wants the city to partner in more creative ways with developers on affordable housing instead of just making developers build units or pay cash in lieu under the inclusionary housing ordinance.

Rigler sees north and east Boulder as the most likely candidates for more housing; the city will probably need to rezone some commercial and industrial land for that to happen.

'A very global perspective'

Rigler, who also worked for former Vice President Al Gore's climate change initiative before coming to Naropa, said he keeps seeing ways his previous international work connects back to Boulder. At the Rockefeller Foundation, he helped put together the funding for what ultimately became the 100 Resilient Cities project, of which Boulder is a participant and grant recipient.

Rigler says he is deeply concerned about climate change and supports the municipalization effort. But he has heard concerns that the assumptions behind the modeling might not be sound.

Rigler says his previous experience gives him a broader perspective that would be valuable on council.

"I bring a very global perspective and not the myopic perspective of some people who have lived here 20 years," he says. "That's balanced with a keen appreciation that Boulder is Boulder. I moved here to live in Boulder."

Rigler says his age and his status as a renter would also bring important perspective to a City Council dominated by older homeowners.

"If we are to have a representative government, it needs to include people like the people in Boulder," he says. "Of course, for that to happen, people need to show up and vote."

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